Oliver Sacks, neurologist and Awakenings author, dies

Oliver Sacks, the British neurologist and acclaimed author, has died at his home in New York City at the age of 82.

Kate Edgar, his long-time personal assistant, told the New York Times that Sacks died of cancer. In February, Sacks revealed that he was in the late stages of terminal cancer after an earlier melanoma in his eye had spread to his liver.

As an author, Sacks was best known for his case studies of people suffering from unusual neurological conditions. His autobiographical book Awakenings – based on his work with patients treated with ad rug that woke them up after several years in a catatonic state – was made into an Academy Award winning film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. 

Other celebrated works include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, that describes the case histories of some of his previous patients and that his since been adopted into an opera by Michael Nyman.

His books have sold over a million copies in the United States alone, propelling him to a level of fame unlike most medical authors.

Born in England on 9 July 1933, Sacks was sent away from London during World War Two bombing and attending boarding school, where he had to endure bullying. Feeling “imprisoned and powerless”, he developed a passion for horses, skiing and motorbikes.

Growing up, he witnessed the growing torment of his schizophrenic brother and his treatment with drugs.

His memoirs also reveal that his mother said: “I wish you had never been born”, when she learned about his homosexuality.

He attended Oxford University in 1951 where he read for a bachelors degree in physiology and biology, before going on to earn a masters and then a medical degree.

He moved to the United States shortly afterwards, completing a fellowship in neurology in Los Angeles. During this period he experimented with recreational drugs, inspiring his 2012 book Hallucinations and his acclaimed essay Altered States, written for the New Yorker.

He moved to New York in 1965 and began his writing career in 1970, taking inspiration from his cases with past and present patients, and his writing style appealed to both his peers and the masses.  

In 2001, he was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, a prize since won by the likes of Richard Dawkins and James Watson.

Sacks never married and described himself as celibate. Before his death, he announced that he had finalised an autobiography that is due to be released later this year.